Roland KIRK

Hi M. T. Here are the covers. All is in the // mail.

HAYNES Roy 1962

Roy Owen Haynes was born in Boston, Massachusetts (1936) and began his full time professional career in 1945. From 1947 to 1949 he worked with Lester Young, and from 1949 to 1952 was a member of the Charlie Parker Quintet. He also recorded at the time with Bud Powell, Wardell Gray, and Stan Getz. From 1953 to 1958 he toured with Sarah Vaughan.

Haynes is one of the most recorded drummers in jazz and in his over 60-year career has played in a wide range of styles ranging from swing to avant-garde jazz. In addition to being a sideman, some feel that Haynes is one of the most original musicians in jazz history. He has a highly expressive, personal style ("Snap Crackle" was a nickname given him in the 1950's) and is known to foster a deep engagement in his bandmates, listening and supporting and lifting the whole band rhythmically and sonically.

He is equally adept at gracefully backing a singer like Sarah Vaughan or in explosive interactions with the likes of John Coltrane, Chick Corea, Eric Dolphy, or Andrew Hill. He has also led his own groups, some performing under the name Hip Ensemble. His most recent recordings as a leader are The Roy Haynes Trio, Fountain of Youth and Where As (recorded live at the Artists' Quarter). As of 2006, he continues to perform world-wide.
His son Graham is a cornetist and his grandson, Marcus Gilmore, is an up-and-coming jazz drummer.

OUT OF THE AFTERNOON

Roy HAYNES dr, Roland KIRK horns, Tommy FLANAGAN p, Henry GRIMES b,

The album is a delightful mix of techniques in arrangement and performance, with all of the musicians delivering terrific work -Haynes' drumming is absolutely wonderful here, lightly dancing around the other instruments, Flanagan's piano playing is equally light and delicate, Grimes' bass work is outstanding (during "Raoul" you have a chance to hear one of the few bowed bass solos on record) and there's not much that can be said about Kirk's sax and flute work that hasn't already been said a hundred times, apart from the fact that the flute solos on "Snap Crackle" help this cut be one of the most outstanding on record.

A Fireside Chat with Roy Haynes, By Fred Jung, November 2003

In the seventy-eight years Roy Haynes has walked the earth computers went from not being invented to being the size of a cafeteria to fitting in the palm of the human hand. Ford introduced the Thunderbird, discontinued the Thunderbird, and reintroduced the new Thunderbird. New York City went from being the jazz center of the world to becoming the center of the world. The Clippers moved from San Diego (where they were a crappy team) to Los Angeles (where they remain a crappy team), man walked on the moon, McDonalds served a billion people, fourteen Presidents have occupied the Oval Office, and bottle water sells for more per gallon than gasoline.
And although much has changed in the world, some things remain constant. Consistency, certainly, something fans of the drummer are familiar with. Not a month after celebrating his seventy-eighth birthday at the Blue Note in New York, Haynes releases his latest studio recording, Love Letters, featuring John Scofield, Josh Redman, Chris McBride, Dave Holland, and Kenny Barron. Yet another consistent recording in a career that is worthy of high praise. Ah, the Royal of Haynes, always smooth, ever as crisp, with a hint of bop, unedited and in his own words.

Fred Jung: What is your secret?
RH: I turned seventy-eight in March, Fred. The jazz encyclopedia has the wrong year and a lot of publications copy that. But I was born in 1925, March 13, Friday afternoon, two in the afternoon, my mother often told me. She said I was good luck for her [laughing].

FJ: Tell me about Love Letters.
RH: Oh, Love Letters, how about that? That was done last May. We were in the studio two days. Each group had a day, the group with Scofield and Dave Holland and Dave Kikoski. I think that was the second day. The first day was Christian McBride, Joshua Redman, and Kenny Barron. I really havent listened to the record that much, but these guys are all great players.
I am in a very unique position here, Fred. It may sound like I am bragging, but so many people want to play with me, young and old, it has been and still is a beautiful career. John Scofield and I, I dont think we have been in the studio together and if we have played together at some point, it hasnt been much. He called me up one day and I sent him a copy of the record and he raved about it. One writer here in New York told my son, and this is a very critical guy and I was so surprised, that he loved this record.
So it feels good. I feel a good vibe about this record. It was made for Japanese people. They suggested different artists that I had on there. Joshua was one of mine and naturally, I love Dave Holland and Kikoski had been playing with me for, he says, fifteen years.
That wasnt my idea for the title. I was thinking more Irving Berlins The Best Thing for You. When we were in the studio, he was going to be a hundred years old around that same period and I always liked his writing. That was the title I was thinking of, The Best Thing for You, but after we decided to do Love Letters, that was from an old movie (Haynes starts singing Love Letters), the Japanese decided to call it that, Love Letters. I want to hear it on the radio. When I hear it on the radio, then I will go crazy [laughing].

FJ: Having had Kikoski in the band for so long, is it second nature now between the two of you?
RH: I dont know if I want to call it second nature, but maybe, maybe. He has his own projects that he has been doing. Plus, I have a new young band. We dont play together that often anymore, but when we do, our last gig was in Philadelphia. We played opposite the Health brothers with Birds of a Feather. It is almost like it is the first time when we play together. He has really listened to what I have been trying to do all of these years and he knows. I can depend on him for so much, even if I fuck up. Second nature, it could be.

FJ: Is the Birds of a Feather band still touring?
RH: Well, not really. We did a lot last year. In fact, my account was damn busy, I went to see him again yesterday. We went everywhere. And then these guys, they each have their own projects. Nicholas Payton has won Grammys. Kenny Garrett has a new record out. These guys are busy as hell. I was telling my agent that I didnt want to do too much and they already have gigs for next year with Birds of a Feather. I am not going to do too much. There is a lot of bookkeeping. These guys get tremendous salaries.
I guess I am not answering your question, Fred. I do that a lot. I guess I should run for President.

FJ: It sounds like you are tapering your touring schedule?
RH: We have a few things coming up in California, May 21 and 26. Other than that, I dont plan to do too much more.

FJ: Having played with a whos who, is there anyone left?
RH: There may be somebody. I never did much with Ornette. I dont know if that would work because he is really not active. My concept has always been that people really have to understand what I am trying to do, those who are on the bandstand with me because everybody cant deal with it or dont want to deal with it. Years ago, when I played with people like Getz and I would make certain record dates, I would play to complement the artist that I was playing with, rather than putting everything that would come to my mind.
These days, I am much older and with my own projects, I do what I want to do, when I want to do. I do anything and evidently that has worked. Evidently, there is a market for it because every place I have played, there may be a young lady who is not familiar with this type of music that will fall in love with it. That is a good sign because people try and say that you cant market this or you cant market that. There is a way that a lot of things can be done, and that is one of the things that has kept me out here this length of time is my concept of the music.

FJ: I said this last time we spoke, but congratulations again on being awarded the Danish Jazzpar prize. It is a tremendous honor.
RH: Oh, thank you, Fred. That is one of the biggest things that happened and was sort of a slap in the face to my dear country here. They gave me some money and the publicity that came from that was so great. I think I told you this, but I was traveling in Europe on a plane with my young band at the time. I think it was Kikoski and probably Ralph Moore, no, Handy. I forget Handys first name.

FH: Craig.
RH: Yes, and a man sitting behind me is reading the paper and he is reading names like Margaret Thatcher and Hemingway and he comes to Boston drummer Roy Haynes. It described that I won this prize. That was a thrill, very big time.
I got another one here in this country that is a big secret, in Washington at the Smithsonian. People had black tie on and it was no big deal. It was nothing. I never heard anything about it. Benny Carter, myself, and a local guitarist that was in a wheelchair, dying of cancer, the three of us got this particular award. It was at the Smithsonian and nobody knew anything about it.
That was some years ago because I remember Benny Carter was going to perform with a big band and after he got through rehearsing. He grabbed me by the arm and were crossing the street. This guy was eighty then. I said, Where do this guy get the fucking energy? He always wanted to play with me. He said, When are we going to play together? He said it that day.
It is great. This is my religion. I take long breaks now when I dont perform and I am not myself when I am not performing.

FJ: How do the hours pass?
RH: I have three children and five or six grandchildren. I have a lot of friends. I have automobiles, several. I have a house in Vegas that I have had for about a year and a half. I go there and just hang out. The weather is nice. Sometimes, it gets too damn hot. I had a little money invested and took it out just before 9/11 for that purpose, to buy a house, cash. I have a couple of houses here. In fact, today in an hour or so, somebody is coming to walk through this house. It is in contract. I was supposed to have a closing tomorrow on this house that I have lived in for twenty-three years.
I am always busy with a lot of stuff. I used to have dogs until I started going on the road a lot. I liked building things. Even as a kid, I was always building cars. I like building things around the house and in the backyard. How does the song go, Ive had a few. Whats the line before that?

FJ: Regrets.
RH: Regrets, exactly. I have my regrets. As they say, Keep on trucking.

To be continued...

BYARD Jaki 1968

Jaki Byard (1922-1999) was one of jazz's most idiosyncratic talents. A pianist capable of playing in almost any jazz style as well as a highly original creative voice, he contributed to epoch-making recordings with some of the most important names in Sixties jazz, and left a powerful legacy of his own work as a band leader and as an inspirational teacher.
Jaki Byard, whose given name was John Arthur, was born into a musical family. As a child, he mastered trumpet as well as piano, and was also adept on bass, trombone, vibes, drums, and saxophone. In the latter connection, American writer Doug Ramsay recalled standing with Paul Desmond, the famous alto saxophonist from the Dave Brubeck Quartet, at a festival when Byard sprang up from the piano, grabbed an alto sax, and fired off a remarkable solo. "I wish he'd mind his own business," Desmond muttered.
He began his professional career after leaving the army (where he learned trombone) in Boston in the late Forties, where he worked with saxophonists Earl Bostic and Sam Rivers and the Ellington violinist and trumpeter Ray Nance, among others. He joined the big band led by Herb Pomeroy in 1955, and subsequently occupied the piano chair in Maynard Ferguson's band from 1959-61. In the course of these years, he played in everything from society dance bands to bebop quintets, and laid down the broadly-based stylistic foundation which was his trademark.
His acknowledged early influences included Fats Waller, Earl Hines, Art Tatum, Erroll Garner and Bud Powell, but his stylistic grasp extended from stride and boogie-woogie to free jazz, and his playing associations were hardly less extensive in their range and variety, including performing the music of the 19th century American concert pianist and classical composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
Byard crafted a highly original approach from this melting pot in knowing fashion. He saw connections and correspondences where others saw only polarities, a vision expressed in his penchant for dropping apparently alien stylistic elements into his solos, a method he applied with equal effectiveness in both beautifully integrated fashion and as a more provocative dislocating device.
The pianist found a role at the heart of the more adventurous jazz experiments of the early Sixties, beginning with his association with saxophonist Eric Dolphy, whom he met in 1959. He played on Dolphy's important Outward Bound album, and recorded is own debut album, Here's Jaki, for Prestige at the saxophonist's instigation in 1961.
He was recruited by bassist and composer Charles Mingus for two of his most important projects of the early Sixties, the Impulse! albums Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus and The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, and is also featured in Mingus's disastrously underprepared Town Hall Concert in 1962.
Byard fitted superbly into Mingus's equally eclectic musical world, although the bassist, a notoriously fickle employer, had harsh words to say about him in the sleeve note to The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, where he pointedly -if sarcastically- accused him of lack of co-operation. The aural evidence tells a different story.
Byard also worked with Don Ellis, Charlie Mariano and Booker Little in that period, before hooking up with another of the music's great iconoclasts, multi-instrumentlaist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, in 1965. Once again, Byard's spiky unpredictability and huge range of reference was ideal for Kirk's music, and he was able to match his leader for volatile humour as well.
At the same time, he continued to lead bands and record in his own right throughout the Sixties, including a classic album from 1968, The Jaki Byard Experience, on which Kirk returned the favour and acted as a sideman in Byard's project.
In the late Sixties, Gunther Schuller invited Byard to head jazz teaching at the New England Conservatory, a position he held for many years, while also teaching at such institutions as the Manhattan School of Music, Bennington College, the Hartford School of Music, the Brooklyn Conservatory, and the University of Massachusetts, among others. His influence as a teacher played a significant part in encouraging the revival of interest in jazz in the late Seventies.
At the same time, he continued to perform and record regularly. He formed two big bands under the same name, the Apollo Stompers, one of which was based in New York and the other in Boston, and worked with a variety of small groups as well. He took over the piano chair in the Ellington Orchestra for a short time when Duke Ellington became ill at the end of his life.
More recently, Byard had been working with the multi-instrumentalist Michael Marcus, an association which recalled some of the atmosphere of his work with Roland Kirk. The duo's second album had been completed before the pianist's death, and was scheduled for release next month.
A mystery surrounds the circumstances of Byard's death. The pianist was found dead from a gunshot wound in the home he shared with his two daughters in the Queen's district of New York, but with no obvious motive or suspect. The death is the subject of a police investigation.

THE JAKI BYARD EXPERIENCE

Jaki BYARD p, Roland KIRK horns, Richard DAVIS b, Alan DAWSON dr,

"Experience" is an apt description of this 1968 monster, more a mystical rendezvous with the Ghosts of Jazz Past, Present, and Future than a mere record album. Pianist Jaki Byard certainly had a kindred spirit in hornman Roland Kirk, another fiercely diverse player who never met a jazz he didn't like--or know how to play. Our journey begins with a 10-minute reading of Bud Powell's "Parisian Thoroughfare" that's more beyond than it is bop. "Hazy Eye" follows, a lovely meditative duet with Byard and bassist Richard Davis, before the quartet (with Alan Dawson on drums and Kirk adding a rare turn on clarinet) reveals the earthy gospel "Shine on Me," taken half-boogie, half-funky. Just as you settle into a groove, a wild, frenzied version of Thelonious Monk's "Evidence" tans your hide as both Byard and Kirk offer whirling, wondrous improvisations. The climax is Eubie Blake's beautiful ballad "Memories of You," a duet for Byard and Kirk that is both stately and stirring. The full quartet waves goodbye with a midtempo "Teach Me Tonight," complete with a nod to Erroll Garner. You can still see the devilish smiles.

Jaki Byard, an Appreciation, by W. Royal Stokes, 1999

I had seen Jaki Byard in performance several times over the years and had talked briefly with him on those occasions when I went up to New York in the spring of 1979 to interview him for a profile in The Washington Post. The article would serve as a preview piece heralding his appearance the following week at Blues Alley with his big band the Apollo Stompers.
Pianist John Kordelewski happened to be heading up to the Big Apple for the weekend and offered me a ride. This was providential, for not only were we both crashing at the tiny pad of Jaki's drummer J. R. Mitchell, we stopped somewhere in Lower Manhattan soon after we entered the city late that evening for my very first experience of a "loft jazz" session. No doubt John and J. R., who was at the drums, recall who the other musicians were, but I do not. I do remember ascending to the venue in a huge freight elevator. And I shall never forget that later, as John had just finished backing into a parking space outside of J. R.'s apartment building somewhere around 85th Street in the early hours of the morning, his car's engine sputtered and died. The vehicle had run out of gas in the final foot or so of our trip from Washington, D.C.!
After a very few hours of sleep I was roused and driven to a nearby subway station and, having been provided with very specific instructions as to how to change trains in downtown, I was soon on the final leg of my journey to Jaki's home in Queens. The pianist met me at the station on his end and we were in a few minutes seated in the very same house on Hollis Avenue in which the creative genius Jaki Byard was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head on February 11, 1999. While as of this writing few details have emerged, it has been reported that no weapon was found at the scene.
"My mother used to give me seventy-five cents to go see the bands that were playing at Quinsigamond Lake -- ten cents for the streetcar each way, fifty cents to get into the dance, five cents for a coke," Jaki told me as we sat over coffee at his dining room table. He held a Camel in one hand and in the other a pencil, with which he doodled on a yellow pad. A baby grand filled one end of the room. Photographs and memorabilia were here and there: Byard and Duke Ellington together in the early 1970s; Byard with Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy in Oslo in 1960 or so; with Stan Kenton later in that decade; a certificate of appreciation from the Rotary Club of Japan; his 1973 Duke Ellington Fellowship from Harvard University; a plaque citing honorary citizenship of the the city of New Orleans.
Continuing on the theme of growing up during the 1930s in Boston, Jaki explained, "I would walk to the dance so that I could drink five cokes. I'd stand in front of the band all night and listen. Fats Waller, Lucky Millinder, Chick Webb with Ella Fitzgerald, the Benny Goodman Quartet with Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, and Gene Krupa. That would be about 1936. And I was tuning in on the radio broadcasts of the big bands from hotels, 11:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Ellington, Basie, Fatha Hines, JImmie Lunceford, Benny Carter. Those were the things that inspired me. I guess it stuck with me."
Although Jaki Byard came up during the Swing Era, his pianistic vocabulary displayed a fluency with the entire history of the jazz idiom from ragtime, blues, boogie woogie, and stride through swing , bebop, and hard bop to cool and free form. He viewed the music's development as an evolutionary process, a continuum from its earliest years.
Jaki's first instrument was piano, which he began lessons on at the age of six, and it remained his principal one. Of the other instruments he mastered along the way, he continued to perform on the alto and tenor saxophones into the 1980s, but long before that gave up playing the trumpet, trombone, guitar, bass, and drums professionally, although he still taught all of them and for compositional purposes was thoroughly familiar with all the instruments in the orchestra.
"My grandmother used to play piano in a silent movie house," Jaki reminisced. "In fact, the piano I first studied on had been given to her by them when the talkies come in. My mother played, my father played, my uncles played -- that was the thing then. Instead of the hi-fi set, people played music. If you didn't play, you had a player piano or a crystal set."
Not long before I interviewed Jaki in 1979 he had formed his big band the Apollo Stompers. In fact, he put together two versions of the Stompers, one made up of New York musicians and one of his students at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he had been teaching for a decade. The student band first came into being as an adjunct of his professorial role and soon was working a weekly gig. But one band wasn't enough for Jaki.
"I was running up and down the road between Boston and New York and I said, 'Why not get a band together in New York, too?'" And that's what he did, forming a big band of New York-based professional musicians. Over the course of the next decade and a half, the New York band recorded several albums.
It wasn't long before Jaki had the experience of combining two bands made up of his students in concert at the New England Conservatory, one on each side of the stage.
"I called it the Stereophonic Ensemble," he joked, "and the effect was very interesting because I could bring that band down and this band up and you could hear the difference -- just like listening to a stereophonic performance. That was one of my dreams.'
Orchestral design for Jaki Byard meant "all the possibilities of music -- organized sounds, improvisation, freedom." Some of his musicians had been with free players such as pianist/leaders Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor, and "all of a sudden," he told me, "they have to play free, just go crazy, and there's nothing I can do about it, until finally, after about five or six minutes, I put my foot down and become the director. 'Either stop this chaos or --!'" He laughed at the thought of it.
I asked him if this sort of "chaos" erupted often. "Oh, inevitably," he responded. "It's a situation that's there. I say, they're gettin' off, let 'em go. Afterward, everybody seems happy about it." He paused at this point, then went on with conviction in his voice. "But someone has to control this type of freedom, there has to be a common denominator, even in a smaller group of, say, five or six musicians. To me, any organization is controlled by a certain person, so in a sense it's a contradiction to say they have complete freedom in music, although some groups today do have that philosophy that they just get on the stand and start playing and that's it."
In addition to performing its leader's contemporary compositions, Jaki Byard's Apollo Stompers also rendered tunes of Eubie Blake, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus and included in its programs dedication pieces to trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, and Woody Shaw and to reed players Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, and Eric Dolphy. Band vocalists sang ballads, spirituals, gospel, blues, and scat, and "Take the A Train" featured a tap dancer. At a club gig Jaki would occasionally rise to his feet from the piano bench and take a few choruses on the saxophone, continuing to play as he strolled among the delighted audience at their tables. At Blues Alley that next week I was seated at the bar when he did this, nodding hello to me over his horn as he passed by, reaching out to take the drink the bartender was extending to him, and never missing a note. Requiescat in pace.

To be continued...

KIRK Roland 1962

The expanding musical universe of Rahsaan Roland Kirk continues its orbit on Domino. While always true to his exceptional talents, Kirk's previous efforts are somewhat derivative when compared to his later and more aggressive sound. On Domino, the genesis of his more assertive presence is thoroughly evident. Additionally, this disc features several impressive originals, as well as the most distinctly branded cover tunes to date, including the intense bop of the title track. As evidenced throughout the album, Kirk's compositions are becoming denser and more involved. "Meeting on Termini's Corner" -an ode to the legendary Five Spot club- mimics the off-kilter rhythms of Thelonious Monk. The tenor sax solo that rises through his multi-instrumentation is stunning. The contrast between the lilting flute work, which bookends "Domino" and the stirring tenor sax solo at the center is yet again indicative of the boundaries Kirk would be approaching. However, it's the Latin-tinged "Rolando" that might best display the unmistakably singular sound that comes from the stritch -a Kirk modified second generation B flat soprano sax- and the tenor sax, when performed simultaneously. The warmth and clarity are at once unique and hypnotic. Another prime example of the multiplicity in Kirk's performance styles can be heard on "I Believe in You". The juxtaposition of the husky tenor with the spry manzello provides a false sense of balance as Kirk delays combining the two until the final chorus. This produces a surprising and memorable effect, as Kirk's arrangement does not anticipate the finale.

DOMINO 1962

Roland KIRK horns, Wynton KELLY p, Vernon MARTIN b, Roy HAYNES dr,

To be continued...

KIRK Roland 1961

We Free Kings, Roland Kirk's third long-player, is among the most consistent of his early efforts. The assembled quartet provides an ample balance of bop and soul compliments to Kirk's decidedly individual polyphonic performance style. His inimitable writing and arranging techniques develop into some great originals, as well as personalize the chosen cover tunes. With a nod to the contemporary performance style of John Coltrane, as well as a measure of his influences -most notably Clifford Brown and Sidney Bechet- Kirk maneuvers into and out of some inspiring situations. His decidedly 'Trane-esque solos on "My Delight" are supported with a high degree of flexibility by one-time Charles Mingus' pianist Richard Wyands and Dizzy Gillespie percussionist Charlie Persip. The album's title track is a Kirk original, based on the melody of the Christmas hymn "We Three Kings." Incorporating recognizable melodies into Kirk's oft times unorthodox musical settings would prove to be a motif throughout his career. An example is the highly touted cover of Charlie Parker's "Blues for Alice". This is an ideal avenue for the quartet to explore one of Kirk's specialties -the blues. The almost irreverent manner in which he fuses blues and soul music into the otherwise bop-driven arrangements is striking. "A Sack Full of Soul" is a funky number with a walking-blues backbeat that perfectly supports Kirk's swinging solos. The stop time syncopation is reminiscent of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say".

WE FREE KINGS 1961

Roland KIRK horns, & (on 3,4,5,9) Richard WYANDS p, Art DAVIS b, Charlie PERSIP dr, (on 1,2,6,7,8) Hank JONES p, Wendell MARSHALL b, Charlie PERSIP dr,

To be continued...

JONES Quincy 1962 - Brazil

In a musical career that has spanned six decades, Quincy Jones has earned his reputation as a renaissance man of American music. Jones has distinguished himself as a bandleader, a solo artist, a sideman, a songwriter, a producer, an arranger, a film composer, and a record label executive, and outside of music, he's also written books, produced major motion pictures, and helped create television series. And a quick look at a few of the artists Jones has worked with suggests the remarkable diversity of his career -- Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Lesley Gore, Michael Jackson, Peggy Lee, Ray Charles, Paul Simon, and Aretha Franklin.
Jones was born in Chicago, IL, on March 14, 1933. When he was still a youngster, his family moved to Seattle, WA, and he soon developed an interest in music. In his early teens, Jones began learning the trumpet, and started singing with a local gospel group. By the time he graduated from high school in 1950, Jones had displayed enough promise to win a scholarship to Boston-based music school Schillinger House (which later became known as the Berklee School of Music). After a year at Schillinger, Jones relocated to New York City, where he found work as an arranger, writing charts for Count Basie, Cannonball Adderley, Tommy Dorsey, and Dinah Washington, among others. In 1953, Jones scored his first big break as a performer; he was added to the brass section of Lionel Hampton's orchestra, where he found himself playing alongside jazz legends Art Farmer and Clifford Brown. Three years later, Dizzy Gillespie tapped Jones to play in his band, and later in 1956, when Gillespie was invited to put together a big band of outstanding international musicians, Diz chose Quincy to lead the ensemble. Jones also released his first album under his own name that year, a set for ABC-Paramount appropriately entitled This Is How I Feel About Jazz.
In 1957, Jones moved to Paris in order to study with Nadia Boulanger, an expatriate American composer with a stellar track record in educating composers and bandleaders. During his sojourn in France, Jones took a job with the French record label Barclay, where he produced and arranged sessions for Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour, as well as traveling American artists, including Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan. Jones' work for Barclay impressed the management at Mercury Records, a American label affiliated with the French imprint, and in 1961, he was named a vice president for Mercury, the first time an African-American had been hired as an upper-level executive by a major U.S. recording company. Jones scored one of his first major pop successes when he produced and arranged "It's My Party" for teenage vocalist Lesley Gore, which marked his first significant step away from jazz into the larger world of popular music. (Jones also freelanced for other labels on the side, including arranging a number of memorable Atlantic sides for Ray Charles.) In 1963, Jones began exploring what would become a fruitful medium for him when he composed his first film score for Sidney Lumet's controversial drama The Pawnbroker; he would go on to write music for 33 feature films, including In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and The Getaway. In 1964, Jones's work with Count Basie led him to arrange and conduct sessions for Frank Sinatra's album It Might as Well Be Swing, recorded in collaboration with Basie and his orchestra; he also worked with Sinatra and Basie again as an arranger for the award-winning Sinatra at the Sands set, and would produce and arrange one of Sinatra's last albums, L.A. Is My Lady, in 1984.
While Jones maintained a busy schedule as a composer, producer, and arranger through the 1960s, he also re-emerged as a recording artist in 1969 with the album Walking in Space, which found Jones recasting his big-band influences within the framework of the budding fusion movement and the influences of contemporary rock, pop, and R&B sounds. The album was a commercial and critical success, and kick started Jones's career as a recording artist. At the same time, he began working more closely with contemporary pop artists, producing sessions for Aretha Franklin and arranging strings for Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon, and while Jones continued to work with jazz artists, many hard-and-fast jazz fans began to accuse Jones of turning his back on the genre, though Jones always contended his greatest allegiance was to African-American musical culture rather than any specific style. (Jones did, however, make one major jazz gesture in 1991, when he persuaded Miles Davis to revisit the classic Gil Evans arrangements from Miles Ahead, Sketches of Spain, and Porgy and Bess for that year's Montreux Jazz Festival; Jones coordinated the concert and led the orchestra, and it proved to be one of the last major events for the ailing Davis, who passed on a few months later.) In 1974, Jones suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm, and while he made a full recovery, he also made a decision to cut back on his schedule to spend more time with his family. While Jones may have had fewer projects on his plate in the late '70s and early '80s, they tended to be higher profile from this point on; he produced major chart hits for the Brothers Johnson, Rufus and Chaka Khan, and his own albums grew into all-star productions in which Jones orchestrated top players and singers in elaborate pop-R&B confections on sets like Body Heat, Sounds...And Stuff Like That!!, and The Dude. Jones' biggest mainstream success, however, came with his work with Michael Jackson; Jones produced his breakout solo album, Off the Wall, in 1979, and in 1982 they teamed up again for Thriller, which went on to become the biggest-selling album of all time. Jones was also on hand for Thriller's follow-up, 1987's Bad, the celebrated USA for Africa session which produced the benefit single "We Are the World" (written by Jackson and Lionel Richie), and he produced a rare album in which Jackson narrated the story of the film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
Having risen to the heights of the recording industry, in 1985 Jones moved from scoring films to producing them; his first screen project was the screen adaptation of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Whoopi Goldberg. 1991 found him moving into television production with the situation comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which gave Will Smith his first starring role. Jones' production company also launched several other successful shows, including In the House and Mad TV. He also produced a massive concert to help commemorate the 1993 inauguration of president Bill Clinton, and at the 1995 Academy Awards won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a prize that doubtless found its place beside Quincy's 26 Grammy Awards.

Quincy JONES 1962 Bossa Nova

Clark TERRY tp, Phil WOODS as, Paul GONSALVES ts, Roland KIRK fl, Jeroma RICHARDSON reeds, Lalo SCHIFFRIN p, Jim HALL g, Chris WHITE b, Rudy COLLINS dr, José PAULA & Jack del RIO & Carlos GOMEZ perc,

KIRK Roland 1956

We have some Roland Kirk's fans in the group but they didn't send any particular request.

The easyest way is then to start with the first recorded album "Third Dimension".

Kirk was born Ronald Theodore Kirk in Columbus, Ohio, but felt compelled by a dream to transpose two letters in his first name to make Roland. In 1970, Kirk added "Rahsaan" to his name.
Preferring to lead his own groups, Kirk rarely performed as a sideman, though he did record with arranger Quincy Jones, Roy Haynes and had especially notable stints with Charles Mingus. He played the lead flute and solo on Jones' Soul Bossa Nova, a song popularized in the Austin Powers films.
His playing was generally rooted in soul jazz or hard bop, but Kirk's knowledge of jazz history allowed him to draw on many elements of the music's history, from ragtime to swing and free jazz. Kirk also regularly explored classical and pop music.
Kirk played and collected a number of musical instruments, mainly various saxophones, clarinets and flutes. His main instruments were a tenor saxophone and two obscure saxophones: the manzello (similar to a soprano sax) and the stritch (a straight alto sax lacking the instrument's characteristic upturned bell). Kirk modified these instruments himself to accommodate his simultaneous playing technique. He typically appeared on stage with all three horns hanging around his neck, as well as a variety of other instruments, including flutes and whistles, and often kept a gong within reach. Kirk also played harmonica, english horn, recorders and was a competent trumpeter. He often had unique approaches, using a saxophone mouthpiece on a trumpet or playing nose flute. He additionally used many extramusical sounds in his art, such as alarm clocks, whistles, sirens, a section of common garden hose ("the black mystery pipes") and even primitive electronic sounds (before such things became commonplace).
Rahsaan simultaneously playing flute and singing, punctuated with a siren whistle. Kirk was also an influential flautist, employing several techniques that he developed himself. One technique was to sing or hum into the flute at the same time as playing. Another was to play the standard transverse flute at the same time as a nose flute.
Some observers thought that Kirk's bizarre onstage appearance and simultaneous multi-instrumentalism were just gimmicks, especially when coming from a blind man, but these opinions usually vanished when Kirk actually started playing. He used the multiple horns to play true chords, essentially functioning as a one-man saxophone section. Kirk insisted that he was only trying to emulate the sounds he heard in his mind.
Kirk was also a major exponent and practitioner of circular breathing. Using this technique, Kirk was not only able to sustain a single note for virtually any length of time; he could also play sixteenth-note runs of almost unlimited length, and at high speeds. His circular breathing ability enabled him to record "Concerto For Saxophone" on the "Prepare Thyself To Deal With A Miracle" LP in one continuous take of about 20 minutes' playing with no discernible "break" for inhaling. His long-time producer at Atlantic Jazz, Joel Dorn, believes he should have received credit in The Guinness Book of World Records for such feats (he was capable of playing continuously "without taking a breath" for far longer than exhibited on that LP), but this never happened.
"The Case Of The 3-Sided Dream in Audio Color" was a unique album in jazz and popular music recorded annals. It was a two-LP set, with Side 4 apparently "blank," the label not indicating any content. However, once word of "the secret message" got around among Rahsaan's fans, one would find that about 12 minutes into Side 4 appeared the first of two telephone answering machine messages recorded by Kirk, the second following soon thereafter (but separated by more blank grooves). The surprise impact of these segments appearing on "blank" Side 4 was lost, of course, on the CD reissue of this album. These spoken-word segments reflected the tenor of the times, so to speak, with the rather pessimistic theme that humanity had "blown" its chance to live in a world of peace and harmony. But this was entirely in keeping with the fact that, despite his loss at an early age of his visual acuity, Rahsaan was very much on top of societal developments, racial and economic injustice and disparity. (Indeed, he had participated many years previously in protests against the failure of TV show hosts like Merv Griffin to hire any non-white musicians.) He gleaned information on what was happening in the world via audio media like radio and the sounds coming from TV sets. His later recordings often incorporated his spoken commentaries on current events, including Richard M. Nixon's involvement in Watergate. The "3-Sided Dream" album was a "concept album," somewhat akin to the Beatles' "psychedelic" phase in the incorporation of "found" or environmental sounds and tape loops, tapes being played backwards, etc. Snippets of Billie Holiday singing are also heard briefly. The album even confronts the rise of influence of computers in society, as Rahsaan threatens to pull the plug on the machine trying to tell him what to do.
In 1975, Kirk suffered a major stroke which led to partial paralysis of one side of his body. Despite this, he continued to perform, modifying his instruments himself to enable him to play with only one arm. At a live performance at Ronnie Scott's club in London he even managed to play two instruments, and carried on to tour internationally and even appear on TV.
He died from a second stroke in 1977 after performing at the Bluebird nightclub in Bloomington, Indiana.

Roland KIRK 1956 Third Dimension

On this album, he plays tenor, straight alto and straight soprano saxes. Try with any of your friends a blinfold test with "Stormy Weather" and ask them who are the sax players (plural)? I know this album for so many years and I'm always amazed when I listen to it... Blowing in, at least two horns, melody on one and improvisation on the other...

Roland KIRK saxes, James MADISON p, Carl PRUITT b, Henry DUNCAN dr,

To be continued...

GOODBYE PORK PIE HAT

"GOODBYE PORKPIE HAT" PART 1 & PART 2

Here are 35 versions of this very great song written by Charles MINGUS in memory of Lester YOUNG (1909-1959). The recordings begin with Charles MINGUS in 1959, then Joni MITCHELL, Roland KIRK, Charles McPHERSON, Claire DALY and many others, be careful, with the volume, listening to Anthony BRAXTON! Those tracks go from the absolute, absolute best to the... Well, here are all the versions I have, instrumental and vocal! If you have other ones, I'll be glad to know them. Enjoy... and tell us!